Cosmic Ray

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Cute little game. It is enjoyable for a while but I wish the time limit was not so severe. Exploration under duress.

Hard to explain, but I enjoy the game. The core conceit is that it takes five minutes to play, unless you die earlier. This makes it a rather niche game I suspect, but it works for me. The core concept is that you are humanities last hope, and trying to terraform planets to save the human race. The game mechanics are very simply, you fly around looking for solar systems, which oddly enough consists of a bunch planets in he same orbit around a star, and look for planets worth using your limited supply of terraforming gas on. The information you get is limited, the population potential, and the percentage change of success. Completing the terraforming consists solely of holding down the left mouse button, nothing more. While on the planet however, it is worthwhile zipping around exploring it, as you can find repair nodules (red dots) and schematics for upgrades (boxes with question marks on them) or alient artifacts. There are times when you will drop down on to a planet you don't want to terraform to grab these, that is cool. The upgrades so far include better weapons, a speed boost, and faster terraforming. You need parts, little bolts dropped by one kind of enemy ship, to install. The alien artifacts change basic factors in the game, and at the start of each game you get to pick one. So far I have seen one that makes you harder to detect and one that gives you more terraforming gas at the start. I think there are eight or ten total. One of the things I like is that the things you find are persistent between games. One downside in my mind is there is no score. You do get a rundown of how your run was, including the percentage of humanity saved, which I uses as my own personal measure, but an actual score would be nice. I have to give high marks to the visuals, the sense of 3-D, when it is there, is awesome. All of your flight and combat is on a 2-D plane, but zipping around the planets, and looking at the asteroids is top notch. The sound is also pretty nice. Another negative for me was the controls though, and I feel I need to mention this. The game allows for mouse and keyboard, or controller, but both feel awkward. In the end, I found learning mouse and key-board easier, but you will have to decide for yourself which you prefer. All in all though, a lot of fun. I suspect once it is beaten once or twice, it will quickly be uninstalled, but I am getting my moneys worth.